


earth to earth

by newsbypostcard



Series: Incorporeality [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 15:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14452344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: It had been a long time since he'd thought of himself as an idealist, but if anyone was still bound to call him one, it was Bucky.( INFINITY WAR SPOILERS )





	earth to earth

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Пепел к пеплу](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385179) by [Christoph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christoph/pseuds/Christoph), [fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018/pseuds/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018)



> The narrator of this fic questions himself, his sanity, his faith, while dealing with a MAJOR SPOILER EVENT in the immediate wake of Infinity War. Tags are not inclusive, but I did include **major character death**. If you know my fic, you know you might want to come into this with a bit of armour on. Haha! Hahaha. Okay. Boy.

  


  


***

  


  


It's not like the train. It's not like jumping forward sixty-eight years at once. Steve watches Bucky disintegrate and, for the first time since this whole thing started, thinks he might be going insane.

  


***

  


  


        _Steve?_

  


  


***

  


  


It had been a long time since he'd thought of himself as an idealist, but if anyone was still bound to call him one, it was Bucky.

"Still leading with stubborn hope." Bucky checked the load of his gun compulsively, like he wasn't sure if he'd loaded it. Maybe he couldn't remember. He'd had that faraway look in his eyes, like when he was staring into the fire when he thought Steve was asleep. 

Bucky's awareness kept faltering. Steve kept seeing it. The second fact proved the first.

( _Is Steve's awareness faltering now? Is Bucky there, is it just that Steve can't see him? Maybe he can't remember where Bucky last was whole—thought he was here. Ashes through his fingers._ )

"Not leading much of anything right now," Steve had said, as Bucky shut the chamber again.

"Please," Bucky said. "People look to you as morale officer, then as now. You keep saying we don't trade lives—"

"We don't."

"That's what being a soldier _is_."

Steve set his shield down and faced Bucky, hand at his hip, brow folded low over his eyes. Frustration was quick to surface these days. He regrets that now. He regrets all of this now. 

"Maybe that's how you see it," Steve said, sharp. "But I never have. We're here to save lives. To make a difference in the fight, not to play God."

"And offer up our own lives in return." Bucky didn't raise his voice; his eyes were as flat as ever, a little distant, not quite connecting with Steve's. "You're a hell of a leader. Always were. I know better than to accuse you of lying—"

"I'm not."

"But some of us trade in lives all the time." He did meet Steve's eye, then. Life sparked dully behind them. "There's no shame in it. Sometimes that's how you survive."

Steve watched Bucky check his knives, muttering to himself; an old war tactic. Steve managed to get calm again, brought to it by Bucky's surrender. God, but Bucky doesn't want to be here. What Steve wouldn't have given ( _we don't trade lives_ ) to save him from it. 

"I won't lead with survival alone," Steve said, quiet. "God knows I know what…"

He'd trailed off. His hands closed into fists, weight heavy in both hands. 

In the corner of Steve's eye, he'd seen Bucky open the chamber again. "I know," he said quietly, and slammed it shut again. 

"We have to try."

A smile at his lips. "Always the goddamned idealist." It was more _about_ Steve than directed to him. "Takes strength. More than I have."

"You have plenty." Steve reached out to set a hand at Bucky's hip, then slid it to his back, and then let it fall away. The last time. The last time.

  


  


***

  


  


It's not the first time Steve wishes he did trade in lives. It's just the first time the feeling's stuck.

  


  


***

  


  


For a second, he'd believed again. Not in anything good. Steve may not trade in lives, but God does. Steve had taken the course of his life into his own hands all those years ago, tried to save himself—tried to save Bucky—and now his punishment is to watch Bucky die over and over again, just out of his reach.

Turning to ash: a fate long overdue. A debt owed to the world. Bucky would have thought so.

"Oh, God," he'd breathed. Miracles can be terrible, too.

And then his faith was gone again, disintegrated with the rest.

  


  


***

  


  


"Steve."

Already his memory's fading. He doubts himself. Steve's just not looking hard enough, not listening. Awareness faltering. Ashes between his fingers, like he's checking the chamber, trying to remember. Trying to hold on.

"Steve."

     _Steve?_

"Come on." Fingers tugging at his collar, slipping against his neck. Distracted, imprecise. Steve wants to swat at it, but he can't move his hands from the ash. "No use just sitting here."

Natasha's voice is too goddamned steady. Something hot rises in him. "It doesn't make…"

"Steve," Natasha says, and Steve can't hear Bucky's voice in it until he can: _Steve?_ , like Steve would have an explanation. Like he could have stopped it. Reached his hand just a little bit further, hooked Bucky's fingers with his. Stopped him from falling off the train.

He runs his fingers through the ashes. Checking the chamber. He opens his hand and drags his fingers through the dirt.

Who among them had the ash within them? Is Steve ash himself, due to disintegrate in a matter of seconds?

The world has a plan for him.

But he'd thought the world had a plan for Bucky, too.

  


  


***

  


  


"Just shut up," Bucky'd told him, grinning, "and try it."

"You don't have to _feed_ me."

"Then feed yourself."

Steve half-heartedly raised a hand, then let it drop from exhaustion. "I can't."

Bucky shook his head and actually raised a spoon to Steve's mouth. "Eat this delicious fuckin meal I'm making you, Rogers, or so help me—"

Once they'd repaired the Quinjet after it'd been nearly shot down springing the Raft, it'd been easy enough for Steve to fly down to Wakanda. It'd been smart to liaise with the true leader of the free world every once in a while—maybe the only person Steve trusted to save the world anymore, if it came down to it. The fact that Bucky was in Wakanda too, working on farms to pay off his "debt," was more than a bonus. Steve spent days at the palace and nights with Bucky in his cozy roundhouse, and together they found some of what they used to have. It wasn't the same, could never be the same. But in moments like these—Steve fucked-out and happy, watching Bucky pull out whatever he'd stuck in the fire before Steve had gotten there—it felt like the world still had something good to offer them after all this time.

Bucky really looked like he was prepared to feed him this stew by hand if Steve didn't do something about it, so Steve reached up and took the spoon from his hand. Then he delayed. He pulled Bucky down by the arm and kissed him instead, dragging his thumb across his stubbled jaw, making it last. Letting it warm them within and between. 

"Pretty good," Steve murmured against Bucky's lips.

"Stew's pretty good too," Bucky rasped back.

Steve pulled him back into bed, right over top of him. "Love to try it someday." 

Bucky pinned him, hard. If he'd had another hand, Steve felt sure he'd have had a spoon already in his mouth. "Try it _now_ ," Bucky menaced, "or you won't get any at all."

Steve smiled, helpless, and kissed him: mouthed his way across his jaw, down his neck, and stayed. "C'mon, Buck," he murmured against his throat. "You in some kind of hurry I don't know about?"

  


  


***

  


  


"Have to get," he mutters—breathy, uncommanding. "Have to get them back." He leans hard on his fingers. Tries to force them not to shake.

"How?" asks Natasha behind him. Flat and brusque, like Steve's weakness annoys her.

It's a slow effort to get to his feet, but he manages. His knees are shaking; his fingers don't want to leave the soil. He straightens and stares at the dirt of them. Ash on his hands. "We have to," he says, folding his hands into fists, "find a way. We don't have a choice."

"We failed." 

"No." 

"We didn't stop it. We don't have anything—" 

"We'll find something." 

Steve sees the frustration as it rips through her face. "What makes you think—"

Steve gives a sound that might be a growl, stepping fast, face right in front of hers. Something feral burns under his skin, but she doesn't recoil. She doesn't move an inch. "What else is there?" He can't stop his breath from shaking. "No one else is going to do it. We're the ones left. We have to try, or what's the fucking point of us?"

Natasha doesn't say anything. Her breath is shaking just like his.

Bruce, from behind them— 

"We gotta go."

They stare at each other another moment. Then Natasha moves. 

Steve stays fixed in place, watching piles of ash dance at his feet.

"Steve."

     _Steve?_

Maybe he is still an idealist, after all this time.

  


  



End file.
